The High Priestess card was the first card of this deck that Lantz created. He saw a HP card in another deck and said "I can do better than that!" and drew her. Then all his friends cheered him on and pushed him into finishing the deck.

actually, it was "The Moon" that was the first card, though you've got the rest of the story correct... the High Priestess is my favorite card though...

In front of her solar plexus she has conjured an orb of living Energy. The ritual of "drawing down the moon comes to my mind.
She is using the orb to scry/ vision, what she needs to know and to communicate via her opened soul.
She works in the nude, like many priestesses do. Her body has a greenish hue, reminiscent of maidens of Power in Siberian myth.
Her hair is open = unbound = open mind to absorb, what she finds and ad it to the circle of esoteric knowledge behind her. She wears a torque with a gold colored pendant. necklaces like that have been found in Scythian graves all over Russia and Siberia. They still bind the voice to be truthful.
Will she share what she sees?

So is it a moon, universe, or mass of energy? I can certainly see why people think it is the moon with it's grey and white colouring. It does, also have a solar haze. I like the idea of the card representing control over the universe and that would include most importantly the subconscious and higher inspirations as represented by the solar moon / lunar sun.

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